Six Austin recreation centers being considered for temporary homeless shelters

Women are shown at a 2011 Jazzercise class at Austin Recreation Center, one of six facilities now being considered for possible use as a temporary homeless shelter.

If you’re looking for a place to temporarily house people who are homeless, you’d start by looking for facilities that have plenty of room to set up bedding, with the benefit of showers, industrial-grade kitchens and computer resources already on site.

To be clear: Nothing has been decided on any of these facilities. But this is the starting point for city staffers who are studying the possibilities. The City Council will weigh their recommendations when deciding whether to turn any of these sites into temporary homeless shelters.

The Aug. 17 memo listing these locations, first reported this week by the Austin Monitor, says staffers considered various factors, including the condition of the building and the proximity to mass transit. They looked at locations across the city, recognizing some homeless people are not downtown and need to have services available elsewhere. Staffers also avoided sites where renovations are planned and considered the impact of lost revenue from rec center programs that could be disrupted.

Kimberly McNeeley, the acting director of the Parks and Recreation Department, wrote that the city could maintain rec center programs — think Zumba classes, gardening clubs and basketball leagues — if shelter functions lasted less than five days. Anything longer than that “will result in the substantial cancellation of recreation center programs and activities at the shelter site,” McNeeley wrote in the two-page memo.

She also noted longer-term shelter operations would require more staffing, including 24-hour logistical support.